Oprah: New Series on OWN

[bellcurve]

The gravy train was over YEARS ago. Non ABC O&O's are actually losing money on Oprah because of how expensive the show has become and because of declining ratings.

Affiliates are probably really excited about Oprah going off the air. It gives them an excuse to spend that money on MORE syndicated shows or in-house news hours that people in her demographic will watch.

No one will actually say it, but most stations that air Oprah are breathing a sigh of relief.

Smart station manager!

[JackPeyton]

I love Oprah Behind the scenes. Also really like master class.

Your OWN show is annoying, yet i watch it.

[Toups]

It's arrived in Canada!......and my basic cable package has it! Yay!! I hope it's just not a preview though. Looking forward to watching Master Class, Behind the Scenes, In the Bedroom with Dr. Laura Berman, Our America with Lisa Ling.

[Sylph]

Already?

[Bright Eyes]

How embarrassing and hilarious.

[Sylph]

That can't be good.

However, she is still as rich as an Egyptian pharaoh:

[All My Shadows]

OWN is boring as hell most of the time...only a few shows are interesting (Our America being #1, IMO), but the rest is the same type of stuff Martha has on Hallmark and various other "lifestyle" networks have. Not very exciting. The movies are all right, but you can see most of them on other channels.

[Sylph]

I used to think she was a lot more creative. But then again, her show is pretty much the same all the time. There's a new film this month?! Let's invite the stars! Amazon has this new thingy called Kindle?! Everyone in the audience gets one! Oprah goes on a trip no. 67! Dr. Oz comes to tell us how to live healthily in an installment no. 5789! And so on. Her audience loves it, but it's difficult to see why. At this point. On the other hand... Her ratings haven't been good in years now.

Setting up a cable network and putting Oprah all over it can't have possibly made them think it would be enough. It's a wrong time to set one up, all the bigger ones are more than established and took the majority of the existing audience. Hers isn't offering anything new so the results are what they are.

[All My Shadows]

That's precisely why I've never been a huge viewer of her show. I mean...for me, most talk shows like that are only interesting when I like the guest or there's a particular segment I want to see. I couldn't imagine watching Oprah interview...idk...Jennifer Aniston. I don't like Jennifer Aniston, and no matter how great Oprah is, I don't watch interviews for the interviewer. So...yeah.

I really don't know what they can do to fix OWN. When your theme is "Oprah Winfrey," there's not really much you can do with that. Oprah's movies? Oprah's favorite shows? Shows Oprah fans would like? What do you do? What doooo you do? Our America is great, but that could air on any number of other networks and still be good.

[Sylph]

It's difficult for me to imagine what this network could look like. Someone might say: let's add some reality shows. OK. But realities were never really big and melted away quickly. Perhaps we could devise a new 'hit' one, but what would that be? A lot of the stuff has been done and there comes a certain degree of classiness, let's put it that way, with Oprah so you can't have blondes screaming at each other B!tch! (She even banned the word from the cable channel.) But let's say we come up with three new shows. That's rich – it's difficult to create one let alone three. But let's say we do it. That's three hours at best. And you need to fill up a week. If there's too much filler, as there already is, it won't work. And it's not working.

Come to think of it, maybe it's not classiness as much as it's a kind of prudishness which just dumps a lot of ideas straight away.

As for the interviews: I agree with you. Apart from that, I've never really felt she was particularly insightful or interesting. There were memorable moments, but so much of it was ultimately fluff.

I don't know... I hope she does something with it. If Oprah's richer, so is everybody else. She does bring a certain kind of spirit and hope and it would be sad to see that go away.

[SFK]

I don't get OWN (see AMS's cable-related status update). When they're talking about cutting down their original programming (and on what planet could that possibly sound good?), what do they plan on filling it with? Infomercials, reruns of Brewster Place?

[Sylph]

<div>Also, don't forget what she said, this is in the initial post of this thread:</div><div><br></div><div>

</div><div><br></div><div>Wonderful. It really is. But so far nothing came close to this.</div>

[Toups]

Two weeks into the network so far and I'm loving "Behind The Scenes." It's nice to see a bit of how the producers do their jobs and the challenges they go through. I'm a Behind-The-Scenes guy so naturally I liked the show. LOL

I liked Simon Cowell's "Master Class" - hearing stories about his early days in the music business.

"Our America" hasn't started yet here. I think we're 2 months behind.

"In The Bedroom" was interesting too. It was about a woman who had a hard time getting intimate with her husband - she could'n't even kiss him.

As long as those four shows stay on the air, I'll be happy.

[Sylph]

I wonder what will she do if this ultimately fails? How much time will Discovery give this cable channel?

[Toups]

I thought she owned OWN?